I'd use something besides cls if I knew how

You can get the equivalent of a cls without going to the shell if you use escape sequences:

use Win32::CONSOLE::ANSI;        # (This is only required in Windows)
print "\e[H\e[J\n";              # Escape-H "homes" the cursor
                                 # Escape-J clears to end-of-screen
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A couple of the other escapes I use fairly frequently are:

print "\e[K";                    # Clear to end-of-line
printf "\e[%d;%dH", $row, $col;  # Positions cursor at given row & col
+umn
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